Good morning, big wide world! Well, something unexpected happened in the middle of the night that got everybody in our flat up and riled up in the middle of the night, so I guess I’m awake for the duration. Might as well take this time to write up some stuff I have been meaning to talk about.
In this post, I want to talk about GeoBlocking, which is a powerful tool that cam models and other adult performers can use to protect their personal privacy.
Some people who use platforms like Chaturbate or OnlyFans may be aware that there are GeoBlocking settings available on some such sites. They are not difficult to set up, and if you have a day job you want to protect or simply wish to avoid having to explain your side hobby to your in-laws, then these settings are a must to configure for your site or chatroom.
These are pretty powerful protections. However, it is important to understand that a determined fan can easily circumvent such restrictions simply by using a VPN to move their access to a different IP address located elsewhere in the world.
But, what to do if you’ve decided to strike it out on your own and get your own domain to start your own website, with blackjack and hookers? Does this mean everyone on the local school board will learn your dirty little secrets?
Of course it doesn’t have to be that way, silly! But, if you’re running your own website, you will have more work on your hands setting it up to protect your privacy.
In this case, more responsibility also means more power – something that Spiderman should probably think about next time he decides to peek into your windows at night.
Ideally, if you run your own website, you will be doing so on WordPress. I can’t think of any reason in this day and age that you would use any other platform, as something like 90% of all websites in the world today are running on it. (I just made that number up, but I’m probably not far off.)
The great thing about WordPress, other than how easy it makes adding new web content, is all the ready made plug-ins that are available to use with the platform.
So, there are two plug-ins that come to mind, which you can use for GeoTargeting / GeoBlocking your site. One is called ClarifyIP GeoBlocking and the other is called simply GeoTargetingWP.
The first is relatively simple to set up, but it may not have all the bells and whistles you would want it to have.
For example, I found that while ClarifyIP can provide country blocking, it did not have any options to block states, provinces, or cities. This is a must if you like in a large nation like Canada, Australia, the USA, or the UK.
I also did not see any features that take advantage of modern GPS location in mobiles and laptops. Not only are far more of these than there are desktop computers nowadays, but they tend to wander around on wireless networks and so they’re also more likely to be using VPN. Not only that, but GPS will be a lot more accurate, as some IP address ranges can sort of wiggle their way out of their assigned country of origin without attracting attention from ICANN, and these cheeky monkeys might not get updated in anybody’s geo-location database for some time.
The final nail in the coffin, in my opinion, is that you can only redirect visitors to a specific page of your site, and this option is global for the entire site.
If those limitations do not bother you, then the ease of configuration and simplicity mind be enough to convince you to give ClarifyIP a try. Just don’t forget to go to their website to register your API key and put that in your plug-in settings, because the service will need to call on the API to convert IP addresses into their countries of origin.
Now let’s compare all that to what GeoTargetingWP offers.
In contrast, the GeoTargetingWP plug-in is extremely versatile. It can geo-block (or geo-target) an entire site, some pages, specific pages, or even blocks of specific content on your WordPress pages, no matter which of the many popular page editors you prefer to use, such as Gutenburg, Elementor, or Divi. Imagine the possibility you can leave some content available, and only remove problematic bits, letting you maximize search engine traffic and affiliate programs while maintaining your anonymity.
Additionally, GeoTargetingWP will let you specify if you want to require users to consent to share their GPS location with you in order to use the site. Remember that most modern laptops and pretty much all mobile phones/tablets will have this capability. Thus, you don’t have to worry that savvy user’s will simply turn on their VPN to circumvent your restrictions.
You may consider that putting in place such a strict requirement may drive away some users, but fear not. GeoTargetingWP configuration options are so flexible, you can limit that not only to certain pages but also certain types of users. For example, you may geo-block only users who have not created an account to sign-in, under the assumption that your credit card system will do some basic address verification and screening for you.
You could even, in theory, build a back-door to your site, that will allow certain users to access the site even if they would otherwise be blocked. This is especially important if say your friendly WordPress admin (that’s me, right? right?) happens to live in the geographic area you want to block.
One thing I especially like about working with GeoTargetingWP is that their database not only includes nations, states and provinces, but also cities around the world. You can even specify a radius – for example let’s say not within 150 miles of Washington DC. You can even create your own custom regions made up of multiple countries, states, or cities, to use as shorthand when creating blocking rules later. That really simplifies the process of setting everything up.
The final positive note I will add is that the developers considered most popular WordPress caching plug-ins when they designed their app, so if your particular caching engine doesn’t work well with the out of the box settings, you can switch over to AJAX mode which is said to be more reliable in these cases.
But, listen to me gush about my baby GeoTargetingWP. Surely, there must be some things about this plug-in that Vivian did not like, right?
Well, for starters, setup isn’t exactly easy. You won’t find their product simply by visiting the Plugins system page in WP Admin. I tried to follow the instructions from the developers’ website, which requires downloading a ZIP file it, but when I uploaded it to WordPress, it threw an error and refused to install.
While that may not happen to every WordPress version or site, it was a challenge that slowed me down for more than a jiffies. In the end, I had to figure out how to FTP into my server and upload the plugin manually that way. (By the way, Archie and Veronica called; they want me to give their antiquated file transfer protocol back.)
Fortunately, once I navigated that little bit of web wizardry, I didn’t encounter any other technical problems with the product. I was just a little sad that I only had one day left on my week-long free trial to test everything out. A week is too short guys, c’mon!
Which brings me to the final downside for this plug-in. Unlocking the API will cost you at a minimum $9/month or $96 for the year. This gets you what the devs call their “baby” plan, which should be plenty for a single starter website.
Of course, if Vivian Kastali was your WordPress admin, she would just input her magic little API key into your site as a nice little way of saying Thank You Very Much for paying me to do sexy IT work for you!
And, if I’m not working for you, well, you know where to find me. ^_^
And that’s all I have to say about geo-blocking for today. Whatever platform you use, I hope they provide it, and I hope you’re taking advantage of it to keep the creepers at bay.
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